


burn the bed and the dreams i've never met

by xhexi



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23672542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xhexi/pseuds/xhexi
Summary: Here's a story, and it's true. Five years after Oz is evacuated, things are mostly back to normal. Miguel has a bad morning.
Relationships: Miguel Alvarez/Ryan O'Reily
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	burn the bed and the dreams i've never met

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Weather" by Novo Amor.

It’s a bad day. The lights flicker on with an obnoxious buzz, a disinterested voice bellows “COUNT”, and the wave of dread washes over Miguel so strongly his head spins. He blinks up at the underside of a cheap, plastic mattress and the nausea and dread crawls up his throat. Oz. Fucking Oz. Everyday, every morning, every night, his whole life in this cinder block cell with grey walls that swallowed up every thought in his head. All because of a car, a girl, a hack, a parole board but mostly, mostly because of him.

He’s spiraling, he realizes distantly, as he hears Ryan shuffling on the bunk above him and jumping down. Miguel stares up at the top bunk and refuses to meet his eyes when Ryan mutters a soft “ _morning_ ” in the voice he only ever seems to manage when they’re alone together.

It’s a long story, the tale of how they ended up in this cell together, using soft voices to greet each other in the morning. It started with Torquemada, an idiot who entered a small pond thinking he was a big fish and got devoured by sharks. He almost pulled Miguel down with him and Miguel would have let him if it weren’t for the angry man who sat across from him in the mess hall at Lardner one morning, eyed him up and down, and spat “Jesus, Alvarez, what the fuck happened to you?”.

Miguel, so strung out on D at the time that he barely recognized Ryan, just smiled and slurred, “God’s will, baby.” Green eyes had cut into his face so sharply that the scar on his cheek throbbed and when Ryan snorted in disgust it cut through the D’s haze and Miguel’s heart skipped a beat. Maybe even two.

“God isn’t here,” Ryan muttered derisively, “He wasn’t in Oz, he not in Lardner, and if he’s real I doubt he wants you sucking off some faggot for pills, _ese_.” Miguel jerked back before he could hide it and Ryan’s clever eyes took in his reaction like a show he had paid to see. Miguel had barred his teeth at him and looked away, but it was obvious Ryan had seen that his words had landed. Hard.

“Make me a deal,” Ryan said lightly, gaze not moving from Miguel’s face, “Help me get rid of your boyfriend from the inside of his little circle and I’ll give you a reason to want to be alive again.”

“You got nothing I want,” Miguel snarked lightly, feeling off kilter. In those days, dancing with O’Reily always made him feel clumsy, always a second away from a misstep.

“I can get you back in a position that doesn’t make you look like someone’s bitch,” Ryan shrugged.

“Maybe I like the position I’m in now,” Miguel fired back, the haze of the D he had taken fading from his mind. His high was ruined thanks to some mouthy, Irish prick who couldn’t even talk straight.

“You don’t,” O’Reily sounded confident. Miguel scowled but didn’t say anything.

“I can get you back in the game,” Ryan continued, and his grin look predatory. Miguel waited a moment to see if his skin would crawl or anxiety would rise. It didn’t, but he didn’t have the energy to examine why.

“El Norte won’t take me back,” he whispered. No one was around, Miguel had gotten used to eating alone. Torquemada held court with his little gang a few tables away. He was always close enough to keep an eye on him but regularly banished Miguel out of the group whenever he displeased him in anyway. Small things, like nodding off in a conversation or refusing a pill slipped between his lips, sent Torquemada in a rage that ended with Miguel eating alone and living in silence until he crawled back, on his knees, to apologize. But Miguel always went back, because Destiny was all he had. Though here was Ryan, offering him more. Miguel watched him closely and Ryan met his eyes readily.

“Not those fuckers,” O’Reily laughed, though it wasn’t particularly funny, “with me. You need back in and I need back up.”

“I’m not a side kick,” Miguel snapped.

“You’re not a fag, either, but you play one really well,” O’Reily shot back. Miguel might have laughed if he was a little higher, less sober. The Irish fuck had a point. Prick. “I’m not asking you to be a sidekick, you crazy fucker, I just need someone to watch my back.”

“You’ve always watched your own back,” Miguel pointed out.

“Yeah, well,” Ryan’s lip quirked, and the first small sign of insecurity and desperation slipped through his mask for a moment, “look how well that’s been working out for me.”

Miguel just stared back, mind spinning. They stared at each other for a few beats before Ryan sighed and braced his hands on the table, readying himself to stand.

“Limited time offer, _amigo_ ,” he drawled, shoulders back and cocky armor right back in place. “But I don’t see you getting any better ones.” He stood and as he moved away, Miguel caught Torquemada’s sharp gaze from across the dining hall. The dead, furious look in his mismatched eyes sent a chill up his spine.

Miguel reached out as O’Reily walked past and tangled his hand lightly in Ryan’s soft, well worn prison uniform top. Ryan stopped cold but didn’t jerk away, instead just stared down at him.

“Okay,” Miguel’s voice had the hoarse quality it adopted sometimes, and it shocked him to hear the word slip out of his mouth. Ryan blinked back for a moment before a shark like smile tilted his lips. His teeth shone under the florescent light and Miguel swallowed.

“Good choice, Miguel,” Ryan touched his wrist briefly as he moved his hand away and the touch sent fire burning through Miguel. “We’ll be in touch,”

The rest, as they say, is history. Ryan plotted and schemed, Miguel got clean (well, cleanish), and in month Torquemada bled out in a shower room with some wise guy holding a shank and thinking it had been his idea all along.

Those moments and hundreds like it had led them here. Five years later and moved back to Oz, Ryan and Miguel’s partnership survived and moved them forward. Life returned to a sense of normal, living in Oz, dealing with the tit trade, the gangs, the danger, and uncertainty. Somewhere along the way Ryan had carved out a piece of Miguel’s heart, a piece that Miguel would have sworn hadn’t been there and hadn’t survived. But he did. Within five years, they had entwined together and if their relationship wasn’t strictly a partnership anymore than it was no one’s business but their own.

But here they were. On this bad day. Ryan moves around the cell noisily, pulling on a pair of jeans and mouth moving quickly.

“We gotta get moving,” Ryan says as he gathers his things together, “I gotta get to kitchen earlier so I can catch Pancamo, we gotta talk about a shipment.” Miguel blinks up at the ceiling again and the dread steals the words from the back of his throat. If he couldn’t feel his chest rise, he wouldn’t be sure he was even breathing. The scars on his chest and face throb in time with his heart and it pulls his focus away from Ryan’s plotting.

“Miguel?” Ryan moves closer, and there is a note of something in his voice. “Miguel, get up.” Miguel did not get up. Didn’t Ryan understand that he couldn’t move? Oz was a graveyard, this bunk his gravesite, and he was buried under all this glass, concrete, and poor choices. Christ, his cheek was throbbing.

“Miguel!” this time the voice was louder and sharper, Ryan’s frustration threading through his voice with just a touch of fear. “Get up!”

The door opens and then there is another voice in the pod, angry and loud, taking the air from Miguel’s lungs.

“It’s time for count,” the voice growls and Miguel recognizes it in the back of his mind as one of the hacks, new as of a few years ago. The new ones never tread as lightly as they should around O’Reily because they never got the chance to see him wild, protecting anything more important than a drug trade. They never saw him protect Cyril.

“He’s sick,” Ryan’s charm wears at Miguel lightly and he feels the urge to roll his eyes. Or he would, if his eyes hadn’t been carved out and left stuck, staring at the ceiling. “He just needs some rest.”

“Get him up,” the hack snarls, leaving loudly and ignoring Ryan’s muttered curses. Maybe he knew to tread lightly after all.

“Miguel?” Ryan is soft and his voice is warm and so so so afraid in a way that Miguel wouldn’t recognize if this wasn’t the man he’d tied his soul to five years ago. The place where Miguel thinks his heart should be beating aches.

Miguel can’t speak. A baton cracks loudly against the plexiglass near his head. He doesn’t jump but Ryan does.

“Stay here,” Ryan says, desperate, “I’ll get them off our backs, just… just stay here.” As if Miguel could move.

Ryan took the air with him when he left. Miguel just blinked, over and over, trying to rid his eyes of the visions Rivera’s empty sockets, of his mother’s face, his baby’s soft hair, Ryan’s playful smirk as he slid between his thighs, Alonzo’s milky eye glaring down at him. Without the air, his chest tightened, and he knew he was gasping.

Time passed in a way that didn’t make sense. For a moment he was in his pod, in another he was in solitary, and in another the infirmary. He was waiting on a bench to go into Em City for the first time, shoulder to shoulder with the man that would stab him. He was banging on a glass door at midnight, knowing that somewhere Cyril O’Reily was dying. He was in Ryan’s arms in a supply closet in Lardner, kissing him for the first time, shaking and scared. He was drawing a blade across his neck, staring into Father Mukada’s eyes. He wasn’t breathing, just pulsating with regrets, triumphs, and the sum of all his parts.

“Breathe,” Ryan says, and air floods into his lungs. His eyes refocus and he is no longer staring at the underside of a bunk. He is on his side, facing a grey cinderblock wall, and Ryan is tucked behind him. They’ve laid in the same bed before but never with the lights on, and the shock of it makes him twitch. Ryan shifts at the movement and Miguel can feel him sit up slightly, feels Ryan’s eyes on him face. With a Herculean effort, Miguel moves his eyes to meet his. The world colors in slightly and he takes another deep breath.

“Miguel,” his name slips through Ryan’s lips like a prize and he holds onto it greedily. “Can you hear me?” Miguel nods, hyperaware of the movement of cloth against his cheek as he does. The cheap pillowcase feels less like the inside of a casket than it did a few moments ago.

“What do you need?” Ryan asks simply and a rush of fondness fills Miguel so strongly he’s sure he will be splinted apart, and Ryan will only be left with pieces of him in his arms. Miguel blinks again, half afraid Ryan will disappear in the second his eyes are closed but when they open again Ryan is still there, looking at him like he’s worth something.

“I don’t…” his voice is hoarse, quiet, and Miguel wants to swallow it back before Ryan can hear the same pained quality that is so plain to Miguel himself. Ryan just stares back, a reassuring weight at his back, something that is holding him down, so he doesn’t float away again. Ryan doesn’t say anything, just waits for him like they have all the time in the world. In a sense, that’s all they do have, is time. The thought doesn’t paralyze Miguel the same way it would have only moments ago.

“Just talk,” Miguel is begging, and the corners of Ryan’s eyes tighten when they hear it. He does though. Miguel doesn’t listen to the words themselves, but watches Ryan’s lips move as he begins to mindless tell a story from years before that Miguel has heard many times before. It’s a good story, with a satisfying ending, some plan that had come to fruition from Ryan’s scheming years before Miguel was the one who shared his plans. He keeps talking and every breath comes a little easier.

One story leads into another and Miguel lets Ryan’s voice wash over him. It feels like breaking the surface of an icy pond and coming up for air. After a few moments Miguel shifts to better look up at Ryan and Ryan’s voice falters. They watch each other for beat, neither moving nor talking. Ryan breaks the silence with a shuddering sigh and lifts his hand slowly to touch just under Miguel’s jaw lightly.

“What’s going on, Miguel?” Ryan whispers, even though they can’t be overheard in this pod, tucked together. Miguel leans into his hand and meets his eyes fully.

“I woke up and thought I might be dead,” he says, and its honesty is a shock that ripples between them.

“You’re alive,” Ryan growls. The hand on his jaw tightens and the scar on his cheek throbs again before going quiet. He feels grounded in this moment and in Ryan’s hands.

“I know, _amante_ ,” the word echoes in the pod like it was shouted. They’d relied one another for years and become as close as two people could be, but Miguel still had to step lightly around some of Ryan’s insecurities. Love, as a word between the two of them, was a crack that Miguel stepped back from often. Occasionally, though, he stepped directly on it. Ryan bit his lip and his hand twitched on Miguel’s face, but his eyes never left his and after a beat a small smirk cross his lips.

“Then let’s get up,” Ryan says and Miguel snorts, feeling the life flood back into his limbs.

“You gotta get off me first,” Miguel teases and Ryan rolls his eyes but moves away from him, letting go of his face. Miguel felt the loss like a bullet but instead of pulling him back down into his grave it passed in a few breaths.

Miguel stood, shaking off the cobwebs and numbness that had wound around his arms and legs. Ryan watches like a hawk from a few feet away, hand twitching at his side like he wanted to wrap them back around Miguel, take him into his grip and secret away with him like a dog with a bone he wants to hid from the world. He smiles at Ryan and Ryan snorts but his lips quirk back before his face slips back to worry.

“You good?” he asks and Miguel nods. Ryan blows out a breath, “Don’t fucking do that again.” Miguel hears the words he doesn’t say. _Don’t slip away again. Don’t die. Don’t fucking leave me._

“I won’t,” he promises, feeling surer on his feet and he means it. Ryan smiles again. Miguel reaches out and hooks a hand in the front of Ryan’s shirt pulling him close, “I mean it, you fuck. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Better not,” Ryan snarks, casting his eyes up, peeking around to see if anyone is watching, before leaning forward and kissing him fiercely. The other inmates knew about them, it wasn’t a secret, but was never smart to put on a show in Oz. Miguel kisses back, hard, feeling his heart beat _alive alive alive_ as his lips caught between Ryan’s.

“Later,” Ryan smirks as he pulls away and Miguel rolls his eyes but smiles back. “We’re already running late. Let’s get going.”

“Lead the way,” Miguel says, as he means the words in ways he never imagined he could. Ryan touches his cheek, tracing the scar on his cheek. It stays quiet under his light touch.

They walk out the pod together and the day carries on. Just one more day in Oz.

**Author's Note:**

> It's so surreal to be writing this. I fell in love with Oz and these characters back in 2009 and proceeded to lurk in the fandom on and off for years. I know this fandom is mostly dead but I suppose this is my love letter to a series that I adored so much. I have such fond feelings for these two characters. Miguel especially has been a character I have carried in my heart for 11 years now. I hated his ending so much and I'm finally fixing it in my own head. A sincere thank you to everyone who wrote for this fandom and pairing over the years.
> 
> Comments are very appreciated, as I feel like I'm throwing this into a void. Thanks for reading!


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